by Noelle Adams
Table of Contents
Winning Her Brother’s Best Friend | Noelle Adams
Characters
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Epilogue
Excerpt from Christmas with a Prince
About Noelle Adams
Winning Her Brother’s Best Friend
Noelle Adams
Ginny Hart loves men. And she loves dating. She just doesn't want a serious relationship. She's tried it before—with her brother's best friend, Ryan—and it's clear she's not cut out for it. So she'll keep having fun and focusing on the new tea shop she recently opened with her best friend.
That's all she needs in her life.
She definitely doesn't need Ryan, who is always hanging around and has turned into a real player. When he challenges her to prove which of them is more popular with the opposite sex, she takes him up on the bet. One month. Four Saturday nights. She'll show him she's not still holding on to old feelings. It doesn't matter if she can't seem to keep her hands off him.
She's not about to let him win.
Fifteen years ago, three girls were thrown together because their brothers were best friends. Now they're all grown up, and their brothers are grown up too. The Tea for Two series tells their stories.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.
Characters
There are three different brother-sister combos introduced in this book (and series), so in case you need a little cheat sheet early on to keep them straight, I’ve outlined them below by family.
The Harts
Noah Hart—hugely successful in business, coming home after many years
Ginny (Virginia) Hart—his sister, co-owner of Tea for Two
Nan—their grandmother
The Stevensons
Emma Stevenson—does finances for her brother’s IT company, is not crazy about Noah
Patrick Stevenson—her brother, a tech genius
The Murphys
Carol Murphy—co-owner of Tea for Two
Ryan Murphy—her brother, a large-animal veterinarian
One
Ginny Hart slumped into a small chair in the corner of Tea for Two and groaned in exhaustion. “Why are Saturday mornings the busiest times of the whole week?”
Carol, her friend and co-owner of their tea shop in Blacksburg, Virginia, was sipping a cup of Earl Grey and looking just as tired and hassled as Ginny felt. “I’d think that would be obvious.”
It was obvious. Saturday mornings were when locals had enough leisure time to walk through town and stop in for a cup of tea and a pastry. But Saturday mornings were also when Ginny least felt like working.
The launch of the tea shop they’d opened six months ago had gone well, and business was better than either of them had hoped for when they’d developed their business plan. Blacksburg wasn’t a big city, but it was a vibrant university town, and there were plenty of college kids and locals to sustain a small business like Tea for Two.
The tea shop had been Carol’s idea, but she’d recruited Ginny to help since Ginny had a degree in marketing and hadn’t liked her previous job. Overall, Ginny was happier than ever, working with one of her best friends since childhood and generally making her own schedule and being her own boss.
But she still dreaded Saturday mornings.
It was two in the afternoon now, and the earlier crowds had finally thinned out. There were plenty of people coming and going through the front door, but the two college students they’d hired to work the tables and behind the counter could easily handle it.
Ginny and Carol sat in silence, both of them recovering for about five minutes before the bell jangled on the door of the shop and their other best friend, Emma Stevenson, walked in. Emma was small and pretty with dark hair and a serious demeanor. She was smiling now though.
She’d been smiling a lot for the past few months, ever since she’d gotten together with Ginny’s brother, Noah.
Today Emma was by herself, which Ginny was glad to see. She loved her older brother, but she occasionally got annoyed that she could rarely see her best friend without him since the two seemed to be joined at the hip lately.
Falling in love was all well and good but so was a little friend time without one’s brother always hanging around.
She tried not to complain, however. She’d never seen Noah happier, and he’d moved back to town when she’d thought he never would.
“Where’s Noah?” Carol asked as Emma sat down at the table with them.
“Why is that always the first thing you ask me? We’re not joined at the hip, you know.” Despite the slightly tart words, Emma’s expression was amused.
That was such a close reflection of Ginny’s thoughts just a moment ago that she gave a little jerk of surprise. “I hate to break it to you,” she said, “but you kind of are. I’ve never seen so much of my brother in my entire life as I have since you and he got together.”
“I guess so.” Emma’s eyes searched Ginny’s face and then Carol’s. “Have we been obnoxious about it?”
Carol, who’d always been the most creative and romantic of the three of them and who was also the most earnest, shook her head. “Of course not. We’re so happy for both of you!”
Ginny laughed. “You haven’t been too bad since you keep the PDA to a minimum. He’s my brother. There’s only so much of him making out I want to see.”
“I can understand that. If either of you hooked up with Patrick, I’d do my share of cringing.” Emma paused. “Not that it’s likely to ever happen since Patrick won’t let himself be dragged away from his computer for even long enough to go on a date.”
That last part was true. Ginny had known Emma’s older brother, Patrick, for as long as she’d known Emma—since their three older brothers had become best friends one summer in camp when they’d been twelve. The girls, thrown together by their families, had been ten and had become best friends themselves shortly afterward. In all that time, Ginny could only remember Patrick going out with three women. His high school girlfriend. His college girlfriend. And a woman he’d dated for six months about three years ago. He was a classic workaholic on top of being a computer geek. She sometimes wondered if the only way he’d ever hook up was if a woman showed up in his office naked.
Not that she was that woman. Patrick was like another brother to her.
“Oh, speaking of...” Carol began.
Ginny’s eyebrows shot up. “Speaking of dates? Do you have a date?”
Carol rolled her big silver-gray eyes. She was as pretty as Emma but in a soft, curvy way. “No. I don’t have a date. I haven’t had a date in ten months and four days.”
“You’re keeping track?” Emma asked with wide eyes.
“Of course I’m keeping track! When it gets to be a year, I’m going to do something drastic. I mean it.”
Ginny chuckled. “I kind of hope it gets to that point just so I can see what kind of drastic action you’re willing to take.” She didn’t know why more guys didn’t ask Carol out. She was pretty and sweet and smart and a fantastic cook. She was sometimes a little shy, so that probably explained it.
Ginny herself had
never been shy.
“Anyway,” Carol went on, “Ryan wants us all to go out this evening. There’s that new club that’s opened up down the street he wants to check out. Beauty Like the Night.”
Ginny shook her head. “Only in Blacksburg would they open up a nightclub named after a Byron poem.”
“It’s supposed to be kind of cool. Ryan said I should get you all to come tonight.”
“Sure, I’ll go,” Ginny said. “It sounds interesting.” She didn’t have a date tonight, and she’d been hearing good things about the club.
“I don’t know,” Emma said slowly. “Noah and I might want to—”
“Please don’t say you’re going to stay in again,” Carol interrupted. “You guys haven’t come out with us in weeks.”
“We were just over at Ryan’s for a cookout last week!”
“I mean at night,” Carol explained. “Surely you aren’t having sex all evening every day of the week. Even if you’re going at it like rabbits, you have to eventually—”
Ginny covered her ears in an exaggerated gesture and repeated loudly, “He’s my brother, he’s my brother, he’s my brother!”
Her friends both laughed, and Ginny lowered her hands.
“I guess we can probably come for a while,” Emma said, evidently reading something real underlying the teasing. “Someone was saying there were poems on the bathroom walls.”
“That’s settled then,” Ginny replied. “You come for the poems in the bathroom. Carol and I will come for the eligible guys.”
“Maybe the loves of our lives will be there,” Carol said with a dreamy sigh.
Emma chuckled. “You never know.”
Ginny rolled her eyes. “You can find the love of your life. I’m not looking for a man.”
“You sure do date a lot if you’re not looking for a man.” Carol finished off the last swallow of her tea.
“Sure. I like men. I don’t want a man. I don’t want a serious relationship.”
“Maybe not right now, but I think that will change once you meet the right one,” Emma said softly. “Remember what happened with my Man-Fast once Noah came to town?”
“This is different. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I haven’t wanted a serious relationship since... since... forever.”
She knew exactly when she’d last wanted a serious relationship—back in college when she was dating Carol’s brother, Ryan—but she wasn’t about to say it out loud.
She didn’t have to.
She’d known Emma and Carol for fifteen years.
“Just because things didn’t work out with Ryan doesn’t mean they’ll never work out with anyone,” Carol said, her face turning serious. “Ryan wasn’t the guy for you. That doesn’t mean no one ever will be.”
“It wasn’t just that. It wasn’t a problem with Ryan. It was a problem with me. Ryan wanted to make it work, and I just couldn’t do it. It was... it was painful and messy, and there’s no use tearing myself up again like that—and tearing up another guy in the process. It’s... it’s just not what I want.”
Emma was nodding slowly. “If it’s really not what you want, then of course we’ll always support you. But remember Noah was saying exactly the same thing less than six months ago.”
“But Noah’s issues were different. He was running away from any real relationship. I’m not. I have good relationships with Noah and Nan and you guys and all my other friends. I just don’t want a serious romantic relationship. Nothing in the world wrong with that.”
“No,” Emma agreed. “There’s not. So you’re just going to keep dating casually for the rest of your life?”
Ginny shrugged. “I’m not thinking about the rest of my life. I’m just thinking about right now. And this is what’s making me happy right now.”
She was telling the absolute truth. She never lied to Emma and Carol.
She still had trouble thinking back to the breakup with Ryan in college without crying about it.
Things were better this way.
They never got painful. They never got boring.
She hadn’t been happy in college, but she was happy now.
And if she still thought wistfully about Ryan from time to time, she could live with that.
RYAN MURPHY STARED at his basement, which was dimly lit and stacked high with old boxes, unused furniture, and miscellaneous equipment. After about thirty seconds, he wanted to walk back up the stairs and nail the door permanently shut.
“Shit,” Patrick said from beside him. “How did it get so bad in the three years you’ve had this house?”
“I have no idea.”
Patrick Stevenson had been one of Ryan’s two best friends since they’d been twelve. He was the smartest person Ryan knew. Now he was shaking his head. “This is just sad. I’ve got one bad closet I wouldn’t want anyone to see, but this is a hundred times worse. What the hell were you thinking?”
With a sigh, Ryan took a few paces away from the stairs and closer to the mess. “I don’t know. I guess I was just thinking I’d stick everything down here for now and tackle it later.”
“And later is now?”
“Later is now.”
“All right. Let’s get going then. Where do you want to start?”
Ryan was starting to regret his spontaneous impulse to organize his basement this weekend, and he was also regretting accepting Patrick’s offer to help. Not that he couldn’t use all the assistance he could get with this mess, but the degree of junk collected here was almost embarrassing.
He figured the old furniture and large sporting and exercise equipment would be easiest to tackle, so he pointed over in that direction.
As they were looking for the cushions to a couch Ryan used in his apartment during vet school—which had somehow ended up scattered all over the basement—Patrick asked, “What prompted this bout of organization?”
Patrick was like that. He didn’t talk as much as other people, but when he did, he always got right to the most central issue.
Ryan straightened up with an orange cushion in his hand. “I don’t really know. The mess was just starting to get on my nerves, and I wanted to...”
“You wanted to what?” Patrick had his hands on a box that was precariously balanced on two of the couch cushions, but he pushed his glasses up his nose and glanced over at Ryan.
“Get a fresh start or something,” Ryan finished lamely, feeling utterly stupid for admitting a feeling so earnest, no matter how true it happened to be.
“I guess that’s why you decided to sell your old cars too.”
Ryan had kept his high school car and his college car, and they’d both been parked outside his house for years now. He’d never driven them once he’d moved on to a new vehicle. He just hadn’t wanted to get rid of them. But last month, he’d finally put out ads for them, and they’d both sold within a few weeks. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I didn’t think about it, but that’s probably why.”
“So why did you get this sudden urge to start fresh?”
“I don’t even know,” Ryan muttered. He was starting to feel a little defensive at Patrick’s continued questioning. “No reason.”
Patrick arched one eyebrow and then looked back down at the box one of his hands was still resting on. “Does it have anything to do with what’s in this box?”
Ryan had no idea what was in any of the boxes in this basement. He had no idea how he had ever even owned this much stuff. He walked over to peer into the box Patrick was focused on.
As soon as he did, his heart gave a ludicrous little leap.
The first thing he saw was a framed picture of him with Ginny Hart, taken when they were dating back in college. Ginny was pretty and blond and breezy and smiling at the camera, and Ryan had his arm around her shoulders.
His smile was focused on her.
It was impossible to mistake the sappy expression in his eyes as he gazed down at her.
He’d been so completely in love with her back then. He’d never
felt anything as powerful before he’d fallen in love with her, and he’d never felt anything like it since.
In the same box with the picture were other items he’d kept from their relationship. The tie with a goat in a graduation cap she’d given him for his college graduation, right before they’d broken up. The old throw blanket they used to cuddle up under as they watched TV. The notebook they’d used to pass notes in the one class they had together in college.
Without thinking, he reached into the box and pulled out the ticket stub for the first movie they’d gone to together. They’d just been friends then, and they’d been planning to go in a group with Patrick and Emma. But the others had bailed on them. So Ryan and Ginny decided to go anyway. They hadn’t known it then, but it had turned into their first date. They’d had such a good time, and Ryan had been blown away by how beautiful and fun and genuine Ginny was.
She’d always just been his best friend’s sister to him, but that night she’d become something else. He’d kissed her for the first time at the end of the night.
Six months later, Ryan had bought an engagement ring for her. It was still there at the bottom of the box.
He’d never had a chance to even offer it to her, and he’d never told anyone of its existence.
“Hey,” Patrick said, breaking into Ryan’s thoughts. “You still here?”
Ryan cleared his throat and dropped the ticket stub back into the box. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?” Ryan genuinely couldn’t remember.
“Does your need for a fresh start have something to do with what’s in this box?”
“Why would it?” It was a hedge question, a stall. Ryan knew exactly what Patrick was implying.
Patrick just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
Ryan sighed, figuring there was no real reason to evade. “Yeah. I guess maybe it does. It just feels like I’ve been holding on to things for too long, and I... I don’t know... I want to move on. In every way.”
“So why don’t you?”
